Earth House Cafe from Craftedspoon on Vimeo.
Welcome to Earth House. I had a meeting here this morning and decided to stick around for a while and hang out. This is going to be my go-to place to chill this summer.
Here's a little bit about Earth House from their website (bold text is my emphasis):
At Earth House we support the arts, promote healthy living, and encourage sustainability by collaborating with local organizations and artists to cultivate community in action. Housed in the historic Lockerbie Central UMC building, the Earth House experience includes all-ages concerts, films, performance arts, classes, social forums, volunteer events and Indiana's only 100% fair trade/organic coffee shop. We believe that creating a healthy, sustainable community begins with you.
This place is cool. I mean, you can see that clearly in the video. Plus, I had mango black bean pizza for lunch. And there is currently a beautiful exhibit called "Windows and Mirrors," a reflection on the war in Afghanistan, on display here. It's pretty incredible.
Let me back up. Earth House occupies the building of Lockerbie Central United Methodist Church, a downtown church that was the result of a merger between two dying Methodist churches. Attempts by young people to revitalize the church led organically to the emergence of Earth House, which is now its own entity, though the church is connected with its programming and hopes to make that connection more of an emphasis. Brenda, the Pastor of Discipleship and Formation at North (one of my summer supervisors), is the volunteer pastor here. She is full-time at North, but she is also appointed as the pastor here, through some strange arrangement that the conference and NUMC are just sort of allowing to happen because it works. LCUMC meets on Sunday evenings and follows an emergent worship style, though for the summer they plan to switch things up a bit to create more space for community discussion. Hence, I'm helping to lead a conversation about the Bible this Sunday. As in, 2 days from now.
Earth House is constantly holding all kinds of events. It is the only 100% fair trade, organic coffee shop in Indiana. It is the largest all-ages music venue in Indianapolis. They are located at a unique spot in the city, sort of at the intersection of several demographics. This is one of the few church-related places where a Jewish youth center feels comfortable holding events. In the past 2 years, more than 100,000 people have come through here. Jordan Updike, the executive director of Earth House, says he hopes this is filling a deep need he perceives for artistic space for his generation (which is also my generation...what are we, Gen Y??).
The meeting I attended today involved several people from Lockerbie Central/Earth House as well as a group from The Garden, the non-traditional worship community that is connected with St. Luke's UMC here in Indianapolis. I don't know enough about The Garden to speak too much to what they do, but it sounds pretty interesting and I intend to learn more. Anyway, this group of people was exploring the possibility of The Garden starting a service at LCUMC on Sunday morning, the only time when there isn't already programming happening in this building. As Brenda explained it, there is a sort of gap in terms of the church having a theological voice and providing non-threatening opportunities for people to enter into those kinds of conversations, and The Garden could be a helpful third entity in tying things together at the location.
It was really interesting to eavesdrop on the conversation for many reasons. These groups are not doing your typical church stuff. You know how I always laugh when people tell me that Duke is too liberal? Those people have no idea what's out there. And, as it turns out, what's out there is pretty awesome.
Part of what interests me most in talking about Earth House/LCUMC/The Garden is the high level of suspicion of evangelism. (I'm right there with them.) I've been doing all this reading about evangelism in a post-modern America, and here is a church (LCUMC) that is seeking to welcome the neighboring community without tricking them or pressuring them to conform. Last summer, I played a show at a youth-oriented coffeeshop that was totally awesome except for one thing: in order to get in, you had to either pay $2 or have a 5-minute conversation with one of the adult volunteers, and the goal of every one of those conversations was to squeeze a conversion out of some teen who just wanted to play pool. I was, how do you say...uncomfortable. That is not what Earth House/LCUMC is going for, and I am very much interested in it. One thing that several LCUMC people talked about in the meeting was that they have adopted, over against traditional evangelism, is an emphasis on a ministry of presence. Several time, people mentioned that they don't have to go find people to tell about the church; through programming at Earth House, people ask them all the time. In articulating the vision of Lockerbie Central, one person (maybe Jordan, I'm forgetting now) said that there are sort of two sides to their mission: Micah 6:8 (act justly, love mercy, walk humbly) and the idea of sanctuary, of creating a safe space. Part of that involves not handing out tracts or making people feel like the price of being in the building is conforming. But there is witness happening here, simply by how the community's needs are being met, both in ways they might want and in way they might not expect.
I'll be thinking about this question of witness a lot this summer as I work on this directed study on evangelism. I will probably write my main paper on this class in part as a field study on Earth House/LCUMC (and possibly NUMC if I get involved in their conversations around hospitality). What I'm learning in all my reading so far is that there is a lot involved in the question of how to
understand and approach evangelism, so there is much to explore...and that's kind of exciting.(Sorry, I just love this blog Hyperbole and a Half, which is where that picture came from.)
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